The cage bars were too close together for even my wolf form to squeeze through, not that shifting would have helped. The last time a prisoner tried, electricity shot through her fur so fast the yelp still echoed in my memory.
Meanwhile, out in the warehouse aisles, men in expensive suits strolled beneath harsh fluorescent lighting. Their lazy footsteps as they peered into cramped, bare-floored cages like mine moved far slower than the pounding of my heart.
Because these buyers weren’t browsing for furniture or electronics. They were shopping for mates.
And I couldn’t afford to be chosen.
“What about her?”
The newest man to look me over was battle-hardened, his nose bumpy from an improperly set break. Despite that, his voice was so quiet it drew my eyes. Reminding myself that glancing up made me more interesting to buyers, I forced my chin back down onto my chest.
“Dirt cheap but hardly useful for your purposes.” My captor’s tone was dismissive. “She’s already mated.”
“Is she?”
Predatory interest rolled off Broken Nose, less slimy yet also more dangerous than that of the previous men who’d passed over me this afternoon while hunting a cheap bedwarmer they could bind themselves to. It hadn’t mattered to any of the others that every woman here was being mated against her will, but perhaps it would matter to this man?
“Don’t let a pretty face shake your focus.” No one except me could hear Braden as he hovered behind my back, invisible and silent since he just so happened to also be dead. As a ghost, he was limited in how much assistance he could provide. But what he’d already given—a short-lived and illusory mate bonding—should be enough to protect me now.
“That face isn’t pretty,” I retorted through our mate bond where only Braden could hear.
“You’re kidding yourself.” Braden’s voice bubbled with laughter and I couldn’t resist tilting my head until I could see him. He looked sixteen, just like when he’d died a decade ago, the same lock of sandy hair falling into his eyes and his smile as easy as ever. The only physical differences between now and then weren’t currently visible: He walked at the same pace as always but could pass through the bars of my cage if he wanted to. Meanwhile, his physical form would begin wisping away at the edges as he grew tired.
“Mate market buyers aren’t my type,” I countered, trying to ignore the taut muscles of the buyers’ forearms that had slid into view along with Braden’s face.
“That man is everybody’s type. He’s a hot hunk of beef bound to make even you rethink vegetarianism.”
Braden wasn’t wrong. It took a mental recitation of facts from my current read—a field guide of arctic lichens—to keep my eyes to myself. Still, I eventually managed to drop my gaze away from those muscular forearms while also shrinking my torso in on itself so my over-sized hoodie and cargo pants would cover up my curves.
Only then did I warn Broken Nose: “You can buy my body, but you can’t buy my affections. I’m mated. Go ahead and check for yourself.”
His voice was even lower than it had been previously when he responded. “I intend to.”
“I already sniffed her,” my captor countered. “You’re wasting your time—this one’s useful as a servant only. There’s a potential mate on your left who would suit your purposes perfectly…”
Everyone else had assumed the man in charge knew what he was talking about when he dismissed me as beneath their notice, but Broken Nose didn’t. Instead, ignoring the salesman’s patter, he crouched down with predatory grace, his face coming dangerously close to electrified bars.
With the buyer directly in front of me, I couldn’t resist staring into his piercing eyes even though Braden had transitioned from cracking up to hovering protectively. My ghostly friend could no longer physically take a punch intended for me the way he had when we were both twelve, and he very clearly hated that fact. Instead, he growled inarticulate warnings Broken Nose wouldn’t hear while the latter murmured words that should have sounded like an order yet didn’t.
“Give me your hand.”
I hesitated, but not for long because I knew my captor couldn’t care less about the cadence of a potential buyer’s request. During the few hours I’d been in here, disobedience had already resulted in multiple electric floors fired up, once beneath me. I could still taste the singed flavor of my body’s reaction and didn’t want to risk a repeat. So I turned my palm sideways and slid it out between the bars.
Broken Nose’s fingers enveloped mine with a rough warmth that felt good after huddling in this underheated warehouse for the last eight hours. His calloused skin rasped against mine, sending an unexpected jolt up my arm, like yet unlike the electrical punishments I was so carefully avoiding. I twitched, yet he held me steady. Almost as if he was protecting me rather than restraining me, making sure I didn’t touch the electrified bars.
Anyone else would have demanded I lift my hand to his nose, but Broken Nose instead bent down to sniff at my skin. “You don’t smell mated.” His words were so quiet I felt them pulse through my skin as much as heard them. The sensation was powerful…and the words were deeply problematic.
“A little more connection if you don’t mind,” I told Braden silently.
But this time, my words skittered oddly through my brain, like shouting into a void and hearing no echo. This was the same way it felt after I broke a temporary mate bond at the end of a rescue.
Only, I hadn’t broken my bond to Braden. I needed that pairing for a few additional hours until captors went home and I could open cages to let prisoners out…
“Braden,” I called again. Silence answered.
Silence like what I’d heard ten years ago when I begged my friend to wake up, knowing he wasn’t merely sleeping. The dark pit of loss I’d felt then made me spin now without regard for current danger.
And my wrist brushed up against metal. The same electricity my captor had forced me to sample when he shoved me into the cage crackled through me.
Pain tasted like blood and smelled like scorched flesh. It lit every nerve ending on fire, a white-hot current racing through my veins.
The effect should have curled my body into a ball, forcing even more contact with the awfulness. Instead, the first burst of agony was muted by Broken Nose’s inexplicable choice to hold onto my hand rather than dropping it. The flow of electricity seemed to be halved by our continued contact even though that didn’t make mathematical sense.
Vaguely, I could feel his fingers working their way up to my wrist, trying to shift me away from the electrified bars. But surprise and dread had jerked my whole body sideways. There was no space for my catty-corner arm to fit without touching the bars. And I couldn’t move…
Trapped. There was no escape from the pain arcing between flesh and metal. And an alpha was in front of me. An alpha like the one who had killed Braden…
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Broken Nose’s jaw clench as he rode out the shock waves rippling through both of us. “Turn it off,” he demanded, raising his voice for the first time yet keeping his tone so steady it seemed as if his muscles weren’t spasming.
Mine were. My teeth chattered against each other, the only part of me able to move.
“Now,” Broken Nose ordered, threading compulsion into the single syllable the way only truly dominant werewolves could.
That shouldn’t have made me feel any better. It should have made the terror pulsing through me ten times worse.
Instead, I found myself starting to relax even before receding footsteps promised our captor was rushing toward the power switch. Because Broken Nose hadn’t turned to ensure his order was followed. Instead, his gaze anchored me, steadying the fear that had ridden in on the coattails of pain.
“Stay with me.” One large thumb traced hypnotic circles into my palm, the movement proof that he could have jerked away and avoided the shock if he’d wanted to. Instead, he maintained contact, absorbing half the awfulness into his own body while forcing my lungs back into gear with a different sort of alpha command: “Breathe.”
We stayed like that for a second or an eternity. His eyes were liquid blue, as deep and mysterious as the reflection of the summer sky on snow-melt ponds miles from civilization. His crooked nose reminded me of the soaring peak I’d recently used as a landmark when traversing the wilderness.
Braden had been right. This alpha was beautiful, just not in a magazine-cover way. He was dangerously awe-inspiring like a fast-approaching hurricane that made it impossible to avert your eyes.
Then the pain receded as quickly as it had started. I sagged forward, my forehead settling against bars that were no longer electrified yet might be again shortly. The metallic tang of my recent shock mixed with the snow and fire scent of the stranger’s skin as I breathed in and out far too quickly. No matter the danger, I couldn’t quite muster the energy to sit up straight.
Physical weakness didn’t derail me from my most important task, however. Instead, I sent more words down my temporary mate bond. “Braden, where are you?”
The silence this time felt both absolute and final. As if we’d never had a mate bond. As if Braden had never walked into this warehouse beside me.
And I had other evidence of his absence also. With my chin on my chest, I could smell myself rather than Braden’s pine-tinged smokiness.
Which meant that not only was my friend inexplicably missing, I was also officially unmated. Unprotected. A prime specimen to be sold off to the highest bidder.
No wonder Broken Nose released my hand as he returned to his feet. His voice was all business as he addressed my captor.
“I’ll take this one, double your asking price.”
***
Chapter 2
“You sure you don’t want to toss her on the mating stage before you go?” My captor’s scent sharpened in a way that wasn’t just accommodating. He wanted to see me on my knees, neck bared and body contorting to avoid cattle prods while Broken Nose’s wolf form ripped through the skin of my neck.
My buyer’s reply was so quiet I could barely make out his words. “I’ll seal my mating in private.”
“She’s disobedient. She’ll require encouragement.”
Broken Nose’s hand, previously gentle around my elbow, tightened, which rattled the chain leash dangling from my newly cuffed wrists. He opened his mouth as if to argue then shook his head and turned us both away from the raised platform at the far end of the warehouse where other buyers were gathering in anticipation of the exact spectacle being discussed.
“No refunds!” my captor shouted after us. “Your problem if you can’t seal the deal!”
Then we were outside, snow-covered tundra stretching endlessly in all directions. The northern wind carried ice crystals that stung my exposed skin like tiny needles and my eyes squinted against the harsh glare of sun on snow. Ignoring the discomfort, I searched for another ghostly friend—Chloe—who should have been waiting.
She wasn’t visible, but I reminded myself she wouldn’t be with my pack bonds quenched. Because it had taken me only one shaky moment to make the connection between Braden’s disappearance and Broken Nose’s touch. To remember the whispers I’d heard about ghost banishers, then to leap from there to the quick fix of closing pack bonds to protect the dead. As soon as my wobbly brain had dredged up that information, I’d slammed my metaphorical mental doors shut to protect those I cared about most.
Without pack bonds, I was just like any other shifter—unable to see or hear ghosts. I could only hope that other members of my ghost pack hadn’t been sent away along with Braden. Could only hope Braden’s dismissal had been temporary rather than permanent.
Well, hope wasn’t the only thing I could do. I could also get away from the likely cause of Braden’s banishment so I could open up my pack bonds and assess the damage.
“Oh!” I pretended to twist my ankle on a chunk of ice. Mimicked losing my balance, floundering, and dropping like a dead weight.
Most people instinctively let go of an off-balance human body dragging them down. But Broken Nose had no sense of self preservation, perhaps didn’t need one given his rock-like solidity. His hand merely moved from my elbow to my waist, the motion so swift I stayed completely vertical.
Vertical and now pressed up against the hard length of my buyer’s torso in a way that made my belly flutter. Heat radiated out from him, a stark contrast to the biting cold seeping through my clothes and making me shiver. I could hardly breathe as I demanded, “Take your hands off me.”
He released his grip so quickly I might as well have burned him. Took a step backwards until a chasm of air separated us, the tips of his ears reddening as he peered over my shoulder rather than meeting my eyes. “I didn’t mean to…”
“You didn’t mean to buy me like a loaf of bread, then handle me in the exact same manner?”
“Yes to the former, no to the latter.” The blush disappeared as quickly as it had appeared, replaced by perfect composure as he pulled a key fob from his pocket and unlocked a blue pickup truck ten feet away. “I have a proposal for you,” he continued, those sky-blue eyes piercing into me. “But I’d prefer to broach the topic somewhere without an audience.”
For a breathless moment, I thought the audience he was referring to was Chloe. But even I couldn’t see her when my pack bonds lay dormant. My buyer definitely shouldn’t be aware of her existence.
Then I belatedly remembered his glance over my shoulder and swiveled to find a trio of hungry-eyed shifters staring at us from the doorway of the warehouse. They were lone wolves who couldn’t afford to buy a mate yet came to mate markets hoping for a dropped scrap.
It was evident from the intensity of their attention that I was the scrap they were looking to gulp up.
Getting into a truck with a strange man while cuffed was monumentally stupid, but I had zero chance of escaping all four of them. Hoping Chloe was still present and that she had the sense to hop into the vehicle and ride along with us, I considered the door Broken Nose had opened for me.
Then I slid inside.
“Here.” Broken Nose didn’t look away from the road while offering me two items in the flat palm of his right hand—the throwaway cell phone I’d bought for this mission, removed from my person when I was shoved into the cage, plus a key that must match my shackles.
This felt like a trap: way too easy. Still, I scooped up both phone and key, fumbling with the latter as I tried to fit it into the keyhole of my handcuffs with hands that couldn’t move more than an inch apart.
“Need help?”
I shook my head then gusted out a ragged sigh of pure relief when the key steadied mid-air, suspended by invisible fingers. Chloe was there.
I let her take over, swiveling my body slightly away from the driver so he couldn’t see the way the key turned by itself. He heard the click though.
“Lock,” he rumbled.
“Why give me the key if you want it to stay locked?” The man made no sense. Against my better judgment, I turned back around so I could check out his expression. But his face remained an unreadable mask.
“My name,” he clarified, “is Locke.”
The muffled sound of tires on pavement filled the space between us for a long moment. Outside, the Dempster Highway ribboned through nearly flat tundra until it reached the mountains. A lone raven perched atop a bullet-riddled road sign, the turn of its head as it watched us pass the only movement in the vast emptiness.
When Locke spoke again, his quiet voice seemed to fit this place where human sounds were swallowed by wilderness. “It’s customary to offer your own name in exchange.”
“So you’ll know what to call me when your fangs tear into my flesh?” In stark contrast to his quiet calm, my words were a blade, meant to cut. I’d learned the hard way that alphas didn’t notice subtleties.
“I have no intention of forcing a mating.”
I barked out a non-laugh. “You’re into catch and release, then? You visit mate markets to buy women then let them go?”
“I would like to become your mate.” Locke spoke to the windshield, his words quiet and focused. “You’d be a pack leader’s partner, well taken care of. You’d have status and devoted backup. As my mate, you’d never again risk ending up in a cage.”
This alpha sounded like he’d cribbed his lines from chapter twelve of Claimed by the Ice Wolf. I’d highlighted that passage…but I still didn’t believe anyone with a Y chromosome would say such a thing. “Who wrote your script?”
The tips of his ears turned red again, but he offered no answer. Instead, he pressed on with what was clearly a carefully memorized speech. “Life is easier with an alpha on your arm. Let me prove it before you make your decision.”
“And if I say no, you won’t stop me when I walk away?”
He met my gaze at last, ice-blue eyes making it hard not to at least consider the unbelievable—that this alpha wasn’t like the others. “That’s right. Any additional requirements?”
“No touching.”
It was a good thing the highway was traffic-free because Locke’s attention remained riveted on me as he cleared his throat before speaking. “A mating can be entirely platonic. The ball on that front is in your court.”
Now I was the one whose cheeks burned. I hadn’t thought through the deeper implications of Locke’s proposal, mostly because I wasn’t really considering accepting his offer. I’d been talking about—
“You grabbed me outside the mate market,” I clarified. “There won’t be a repeat.”
His head cocked ever so slightly, as if the wolf inside him was intrigued by my demand. “If you trip and fall, you want me to let you drop at my feet?”
“Yes.”
“Even if the results would be catastrophic?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not sure I can do that.”
“Figure it out. That’s my line in the sand.”
Locke drummed his fingers against the steering wheel in lieu of an answer, and I was pretty sure I could see the shadow of a beard pushing through the skin of his jaw. Disappointment bit into my belly even as my heartbeat sped up to match the fast thuds of his fingers against padded plastic.
Of course Locke was like every other alpha, preparing to shift at the first sign of rebellion. After all, forcing a mating would be so much easier than negotiating with a prisoner.
Which meant the independence I’d guarded so fiercely all these years was about to vanish with one tear of teeth into my neck. I tensed, gauging our speed of travel. If I jumped out now, would I survive the landing?
Locke slammed on the brakes so hard my seatbelt was the only thing preventing me from cracking my head open on the dashboard. “If you want to leave, tell me.” His voice was clipped, his hands white-knuckled as if he had to physically restrain himself from reaching out to protect me from the whiplash.
And that did what his words hadn’t managed. It made me believe the impossible.
“You really mean it. You’ll let me go if I decide I don’t want to mate with you.”
“Yes.”
“You’re willing to keep your hands to yourself.”
“Unless you give me express permission otherwise.”
As if I’d ask him to touch me. Instead of beating that dead horse, however, I delved into the other sticking point. “You’re offering me a platonic mating in exchange for what, exactly?”
I was trying to figure out what Locke thought he’d get out of such an arrangement. Instead, he misunderstood my question and returned to his script.
“I’ll support you the way an alpha supports his mate. You can test me in any way you like before making your decision.”
He really seemed to mean it. And even though a handshake would have been the traditional way to seal such a deal, he didn’t so much as extend a finger toward me. Just waited. Silent. Patient.
A mating of convenience was far from what I’d intended to win today, but going along with Locke’s test seemed like the easiest way to get rid of him. “I’ll agree to a trial,” I said at last. “No touching. No pack bonds.”
“Then I only need one other thing from you.”
I tensed and his head cocked before he continued.
“Your name. Unless you’d prefer I choose a diminutive. Sunshine? Sweetheart? Darling?”
I grimaced. “My name is Wren.”